The Price of Ashes
by foryouareloved
Summary: "This is how we exist now: buried in flashbacks and memories, Peeta unsure if even half of them are real." An exploration of the night "Real or not real" turned into "real," with some sprinkling of how they got there.
1. Chapter 1

_(Author's Note: It makes my day when you guys leave such sweet comments! Thank you so much! Any thoughts are so welcome and appreciated.)_

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I find him where I always do in the long hours between midnight and dawn, at the spare easel he has taken to keeping in one of the long-abandoned rooms for the rare nights when I can sleep uninterrupted and he can't; find him with his blond head bent over an emerging picture of the sunset he can never quite capture, the yellow-orange of runaway light always managing to dance just out of reach of his talented fingers.

His back goes rigid when he hears the pad of my bare feet, and then his shoulders unlock and he adds a hint of rosy blush to the corner, keeping his eyes on the canvas.

"You're almost there," I tell him as I come forward to stand behind him, my hand hovering above his neck, almost touching, barely restrained, wanting so badly to touch the downy hair that is getting too long, selfishly afraid that even that gentle touch will stiffen him against me, will rob me of his comfort. I can see where he wants to go - I should; it's the color of that last sunset in our first arena; the blaze of forced color that fell over Cato while we were listening to the mutts tear him apart, their teeth flashing white beneath the dead tributes' eyes. I don't want to tell him that the pink he's using in the corner should be much darker, that blood doesn't dry that soft, so instead I say, "You've almost got it right."

"Almost," he says to his picture, and then he drops the paintbrush and turns on his seat to face me. Those eyes, those blue eyes whose color will escape even someone who can capture the orange that always eludes Peeta, flick up and see my hand still waiting stupidly in the air. A slow smile lifts the corner of his mouth and in his smile I see my Peeta, the one who loved me in the snow, who loved me in spite of Snow, even when I was still figuring out whether or not my kisses meant anything other than manipulation and confusion; the one who caught fireflies for me on the train and slipped them into my room so that they burned in the dark, against the dark, while his arms stood guard against my nightmares; the one who hunted all over the forest he'd never been in to bring me the roses that bear my sister's name.

He takes my hand and when I feel his breath warm on my skin I can finally close my eyes and relax against his calm presence.

It happened almost two years ago, but I still remember the first time he came to me in the middle of the night, weeks after he had arrived back in Twelve. For a long period of time my dreams came in colors, and that night's had been the worst. Everything was drenched in silver: a parachute with a shiny-round canister full of broth hanging hatefully at the end, the flash of Clove's knife, the bow I had to break out of Glimmer's hands, the tip of the arrow that took down Cato, Coin's long, too-perfect waterfall of hair, Gale's eyes, Gale's eyes, the color so close to my own, laughing, fading, dark, the rain of more parachutes that hit and exploded, never ending in the dark, the silver never ending, and they hit, they hit, they hit.

I didn't even know I was screaming until I felt his hands on my shoulders, shaking me awake, and then the silver dissolved and everything was blue: the cold light sliding in between the curtains I always forgot to pull, the quilt that was wrapped so tightly around my legs that when I sat up I almost fell back over, would have fallen back over except for the strong hands that have always been there to catch me; the eyes narrowed in concern above a pair of dark circles that told me I wasn't the only one having trouble sleeping.

Back then I couldn't look at his eyes for very long. They hadn't just taken out the haunted look; they had taken everything else out too.

"Why are you awake?" he asks me now. "You were sleeping fine when I left."

"I dreamt of Prim," I say, my eyes still closed, her golden hair still flipping in its messy braid against the dark backdrop of my eyelids, her arms always outstretched, always poised as if about to leap into flight, her smile as sweet as the peppermints she once used to protect me.

Peeta rises without pause and pulls me into his arms and for once I go willingly, allowing him to wrap himself around me, thinking again of that first night, of how hesitant he was to crawl into bed beside me; of how I had burst into helpless tears that his flour-covered hands had wiped away; of how I hadn't realized that, for a girl so constantly on fire, I was always cold unless he was beside me to warm me up.

"It was a good dream," I tell his chest. "She was flying. She was happy."

He holds me wordlessly because he understands how rare this is for me, to wake from a dream of Prim without shrieking loud enough to disturb Haymitch across the street – not that he would ever do anything about it – to wake from a dream of Prim without tears hot on my cheeks and my hands grabbing for him because they can think of nothing else to do.

"I dreamt of you," he says to the top of my head, and it hits me that this is how we've learned to talk to each other, with eyes cut to the side as if we're both afraid to see the truth in each other's gaze, as if it's easier to hear about the pieces of your life from someone you don't have to see. "I dreamt that I found a pearl for you, and told Finnick it came from coal."

An unconscious smile twists my lips and I hug him tighter, feel a small sigh slip from his mouth.

"Real," I tell him without having to be asked. "That was real."

We stand in silence for a moment more, long enough for me to see that he has, as he always does, painted a subtle hint of my face into his sunset, my eyes the gentle slash of the gray clouds racing across the horizon, my mouth bowed on the top of a tree that looks exactly the same as the one from the first arena where he lay awake all night to protect me even while I was cutting off the branch that held the trackerjacker nest.

Seeing that tree I flush all over again, guilt rolling in my stomach in a sick wave. I've seen the film after the nest dropped and it all went wrong; seen the calculated cut Cato gave him with barely a second's pause, seen the geyser of blood that squirted from his leg like one of the brightly colored fountains in the Capitol. It's one of the few memories I've never been able to talk to him about. Selfishly, it's better if he doesn't know if it was real or not, better if he doesn't fully realize how many of my actions were carefully undercut with vindictive motivation while his were so beautifully threaded with emotion and the truth.

He must realize more than I think, however, because he's never asked about it either.

It took us weeks of pretense before he could come to my bed without a hint of unease, before I didn't have to invite him in with screams that could wake the dead; weeks and weeks before he would let himself in even if I was still sleeping, his face as pale as smoke, his body trembling, slipping in beside me like a ghost only to rise in the morning with apologies on his lips, disappearing as soundlessly as he had come.

Weeks before we learned all over again that we could sleep much more soundly when his arms were around my waist and I had my ear nestled above the soothing beat of his heart; that it was easier to wake up screaming in the middle of the night when there was someone beside you already awake.

The first time he came to me before I was asleep was also the night I like to tell him took at least ten years off my life. I'd been sitting in the living room staring blankly at the dark television, a blanket thrown around my shoulders, thinking about how best to destroy the grandfather clock that tick-tocked in the hallway and was slowly driving me crazy. Haymitch had come and gone, stumbling like he was half blind - which, by the aroma following him around, he probably was - and the house was pitch black and quiet as a tomb.

It was the only time I've never heard him coming, didn't even recognize his presence until I saw the outline of his white shirt materialize like a phantom from the shadows, and if I had been a cat I would probably still be hanging from the ceiling.

"I'm sorry!" he said immediately when I jumped high enough to knock the blanket to the floor, clapping my hands over my mouth to stifle the scream bubbling up the back of my throat. "I'm sorry. I thought maybe you were asleep."

"You still could have said something!" I told him angrily as I landed back on the chair, trying to push back my temper, trying to remember that this new Peeta was not always so quick on the draw. "I think you just halved my life expectancy."

"Katniss," he said dryly. "Your life expectancy has never really been that high."

That startled a facsimile of a laugh out of me, and he offered me that horrible blank smile he used to have as he turned on a lamp, scattering the shadows, scaring away the darkness as Peeta was wont to do.

"I was about to go to bed," I said, leaning over to pick up the blanket that had immediately gathered enough cat hair to form a second cat. Keeping my face carefully turned away from his, I asked him, "Did you have a nightmare? You're welcome to stay."

"I haven't been to sleep yet," he said, helping me brush aside the hair, his hands coming close enough to mine where I could see the scars that slashed across his fingers, the tiny golden hairs that glimmered in the light. "I thought maybe we could try starting the night together instead of me catching pneumonia from always walking on wet grass."

I looked at him and he stared back at me determinedly, even though I could see one corner of his eye twitch, see one hand making knots on the fabric of his pants.

"Okay," I told him finally. "Okay, sure."

Then, climbing the stairs, "If you snore, you're out."

It was the first time I'd made Peeta laugh since he came home to Twelve; the first time he hesitantly put his arms around me; the first time we both slept the entire night through.

"You don't like my sunset," he says quietly against my ear, and I jump, feel his grip loosen around my waist.

"I've never liked your pictures from the Games," I remind him. "You make them too real. They hit too close to home."

I move away from him, take a step closer to the canvas, and trace the clouds that stain the fading sky, my finger skating over the pebbled surface that is the same color as my eyes.

"I don't know why you want to remember," I say. "I would give anything to forget."

"Not everything about them was bad," he says, and I can hear the hint of a smile in his voice. "Eating lamb stew in the cave. Frying nuts on the force field. You and Finnick, painting yourselves like swamp hags and trying to send me to an early grave."

I laugh despite myself and turn back to face him, find him watching me with a small grin toying with his lips. It's so rare to hear him talk like this, to hear him casually rattle off things that he remembers without having to stop to gulp in air. It reminds me of the nights on the train when we were both afraid to go to sleep, when we would sit cross-legged on my bed, our knees touching, and trade our favorite stories until I would concede defeat and go to sleep with his strong arms wrapped around me, protecting me until dawn.

He doesn't protest when I rise on tiptoe and trace a trail of kisses up against the skin of his neck where it always smells of home, of flour and cinnamon, of fresh grass and just a hint of mint. His hands tighten against the small of my back as my lips find his, and he returns my kisses until we're trading short bursts of breath into each other's mouths, until I'm suddenly aware that the nightshirt I have taken to wearing was filched from the back of one of Prim's drawers, that it would have been too short on her, is definitely too short on me. Without the security of a blanket hiding me from his eyes, I find myself suddenly wary of the uneven thinness of my legs, too aware of the juxtaposition of old and new skin that decorates me like someone's bad joke of a patchwork quilt.

He sees where my eyes have gone and laughs, just a little, one of his hands coming up to rub a faded scar where his eyebrows used to grow. "Katniss, it's okay," he tells me. "I've seen your body a hundred times."

I've also seen the long pants he wears in winter and summer both, wordlessly covering his own relics from the Games and beyond; the way he demurs from cutting his hair because the too-long shaft of gold covers the jagged scar at his temple where the butt of a gun once gouged, but his eyes are too tired for me to point this out.

"Tell me a story," I say to him instead, to distract us both from legs that suddenly feel as though they will not support me, and he takes a step away from me and crosses his arms as though to ward me off.

"What kind of story do you want?" he asks slowly. "I'm not sure that I would even be telling you the truth."

This is how we exist now: buried in flashbacks and memories, Peeta unsure if even half of them are real.

"Tell me about the day you planted the primroses." The words are out of my mouth before I even have a chance to think about them, but they smooth out the line that has slashed across his forehead, and he sinks down to sit cross-legged on the floor, frowning in concentration as I join him.

"I remember coming home," he says. "But it wasn't home."

Remembering all too well the scents that had lingered – my mother's medicine, Prim's soap, even the gloves Gale had left behind that perfumed the floor of a closet with the smell of pine – and how they had seemed alien in a house that was otherwise deserted, I nod.

"And I realized that it wasn't home because I wasn't trying to find an excuse to come see you," he says. "I didn't even know where you were, the way you used to always closet yourself in the strangest places, and Haymitch-"

He laughs.

"I knew where Haymitch was, but it would have taken too long to wake him up," he says.

Quiet falls over us, and I take his hand as much for my comfort as for his, one of my fingers tracing over the broken circlet of a scar that my teeth left behind, one that he fought the Capitol so hard from erasing that they gave up and left the rest behind as well.

"I thought you wouldn't want to see me," he says quietly. "After the last time we saw each other. One broken heart was enough."

"I did want you-" I start, but he reaches forward and covers my mouth, not unkindly.

"I'm telling the story," he says.

"When Dr. Aurelius let me go, he told me that if I was going to stay here, in Twelve, I needed to find a touchstone to go to when I wasn't sure if I was really home. And while I was walking through the house, looking at the furniture that someone else picked out, the clothes I knew I'd never wear again, I realized that what always made this place home was the people. Your mom, who always joked with me when I brought the bread-"

Did she? This is news to me. I always seem to remember a flare of affection in my mom's eyes when she looked at Peeta, but it was so rare for her to make a joke that I can hardly imagine the emotions driving her to be so relaxed for the boy with the bread.

"You," he continues softly. "Sometimes."

This shocks a rare grin out of me, and he returns it, abashed.

"Haymitch," he says. "Never."

We laugh.

"And Prim," he finishes. "Who could beat me at chess every time we played and then look at me with those big eyes and still manage to convince me to bring over a bag of cookies the next time I came."

"Your mom was gone," he says simply. "Haymitch was worthless."

"Is worthless," I mutter, and Peeta laughs.

"Is mostly worthless," he accepts. "I was too afraid to come find you. So the only thing left that would have made this home was Prim. And since she was gone too, I had to find the next best thing.

"I spent that whole night looking for the bushes," he says in quiet remembrance. "And when I walked up to your house, I didn't know if I was more afraid that you would come outside or that you would ignore me completely. I just keep thinking of the expression on your face when I took the nightlock pill away from you, and how when they dragged you off you kept screaming his name, not mine."

Caught up in his memory, I flush all over again, sure that if Peeta had been the one going to a certain death I would have been the last word on his lips.

"Then I looked up and there you were," he says. "And at first I was furious with Haymitch. He promised me that he would take care of you until I was able to, and he was falling down on the job."

"Worthless," I remind him.

"But then I realized that under all of the dirt and hair, I could still see you," he ignores me. "That Haymitch kept you alive, and I could never really depend on him to do more than that."

He falls silent for long enough that I start to worry about him, and then he shakes his head and smiles to himself.

"Beautiful," he says. "You were beautiful."

"I was horrible," I interject truthfully. "I don't think I'd washed my hair in a month. Johanna would have been jealous."

"It didn't matter, Katniss," he says earnestly. "It's never mattered. In mud, or snow, or in that joke of a wedding dress, or dressed up like a gigantic bird on fire – it's never mattered. I don't think you realize how lovely you are to me. Why do you think I always try to paint you?"

"My sparkling personality," I say. "That's why Haymitch never made the cut."

He doesn't laugh and that's when I know how serious he is, when I know what's finally coming.

"Katniss," he says. "I love you."

I've heard those words from him in so many places, in front of so many people, and I still don't know what to say, still don't know the words to describe exactly what he is to me.

"Even now?" I manage weakly, and he looks away.

"Always," he says.


	2. Chapter 2

It took months before we would touch each other in the daylight, before I could reconcile this new boy whose eyes were a pale imitation of themselves with the boy who had burned bread for me, who had let go of his entire life to present me with the locket I still have carefully wrapped in the bottom drawer of my dresser. It took months of him frosting cookies so that they looked like the flowers I had draped around Rue's body, in all the shades of Effie's hair, even took one night of me hysterically screaming for him to destroy my old kitchen table so that I wouldn't have to be reminded anymore of a time when I couldn't tell which kisses counted and which ones didn't.

There are times when Peeta's not the only one who has problems recognizing what was real.

It took months for me to get past the Peeta who sometimes looks at me as if he's sizing me up, as if he's not sure whether or not to kill me before I kill him, to the Peeta who says my name in his sleep and leaves me fresh sprays of primroses across my pillow, so that I take the sweetness of my sister with me into my dreams.

The book helped. It gave us an excuse to talk without having to look each other in the eyes; gave us a way to recapture some of our better moments. Gave me a way to see which of his memories had been tampered with and which ones I could still like myself in.

The day we started I made him start with Prim, Prim with the hospital whites that she was so proud of, her shirttail flapping behind her ever like a duck, her eyes a steely blue, her hair so like our mother's, so golden soft and lovely even drawn up in its braid.

It took him hours, and when he was done his face was covered in a thin sheen of sweat, deep red indentions bruising his fingers where they had pressed against his brush. Warning myself to be diplomatic no matter what his painting looked like, I leaned over his shoulder and found myself instead making a thin noise like the whistle of a kettle when the water's finally boiled. It was Prim at the end, Prim with her gentle smile, her capable hands, her healing nature, Prim at her best, and when Peeta turned up to me I saw his face twist in instant anxiety.

"It's wrong," he said, reaching for a fresh sheet of paper. "I got it all wrong."

"No," I told him when I was finally able to talk, reaching out to stop his hand, feeling the warmth of his fingers beneath mine. "No, you got it right."

That night when I dreamt of her and woke up weeping his arms didn't seem like enough, and when he kissed me in the dark I returned his kiss without trying to figure out what it meant, kissed him only because I wanted to.

The next day was the first time we laughed together, and after that it got easier.

But when he tells me he loves me I still don't know what to say.

"Peeta," I start, and he shakes his head.

"You know I do," he says quietly.

Of course I do. He does it too well for me not to know, in the way he gets up before me to make sure that there's always warm bread coming out of the oven when I make my way down to the kitchen; the way he's coaxed Prim's bushes into flowering so that the smell of roses no longer sends me cowering against a wall; the look that sometimes flares in his eyes after a particularly bad attack, when he uncurls his fingers from a death grip on a chair and looks at me like he's seeing me for the first time, a look that achieves what no one, even Cinna, has ever been able to do.

Beautiful. He makes me feel beautiful.

"Katniss," he says, and leans forward so that his thumb can stroke against my cheek, can capture a strand of hair and thread it gently around his fingers before sliding down to press against my lip. His brow arches in question and I try on a smile in response, shifting just a little as he scoots closer to me and lifts me up into his lap, his arms sliding around me as he lowers his head down to mine and kisses me against the smell of paint and oils.

Peeta's kissed me at least a thousand times and only a handful of them have had me grasping for him instead of the other way around; but here, on the floor, in the dust, in the moonlight, this goes far beyond anything I've ever felt from him before, anything I've even imagined to be possible. His kisses are urgent, needing, and in the heat of his hands on my waist, of his legs tangled up with mine, his lips warm and soft, that strange hunger opens up in me again, has me tugging him closer, has me wrapping myself around him and giving him what he needs.

Finally in a second, a week, a year, he stops and leans back, his breath coming heavy, and I look up at him in a daze, my lips feeling bruised without his touch, only to find him with his head ducked, one arm thrown across his eyes.

"Peeta," I say, then, a touch impatiently, "Peeta!"

I wait, and when he refuses to look at me I pull his hand down and hold it in between my own.

"You love me," I say, and this bald declaration startles him enough so that his eyes finally meet flip up to meet mine, guarded.

"Show me," I tell him quietly, and I can see the jerk of his throat as he swallows.

"Katniss," he says again, and I reach forward and cover his mouth, not unkindly.

"I'm going to tell you a story," I say to him. "It's a fairy tale, okay?"

He nods warily against my hand.

"Once upon a time there was a girl," I say. "And she lived her whole life feeling like no one understood the burden that she had to carry. And then she met someone who did understand, because he had the same burden. And she wasn't happy, but she was satisfied.

"And then," I say quietly, "She was kidnapped by an evil monster and told that to come home she had to kill a lot of other people whose burdens were just as awful as her own. And while she was figuring out what to do she met a man who didn't understand, but it was better that he didn't, because he made her happy. And the monster didn't like that. He tried to turn them against each other. He even set the girl on fire. And once she burned out, once she was reduced to only ashes, she found out that she didn't need the man who understood, because he was the same as the man who set her on fire. She needed the man who made her happy, because he was the only one who could bring her back to life.

Peeta is looking at me unhappily when I take away my hand, and I offer him a hint of a smile in return.

"It's not really a happy ending," I tell him. "It's more of a cliffhanger."

"You really don't think I understand?" he asks, and I shrug.

"Not like Ga- like other people did," I say. "You never put your name in extra times for tesserae, right? But I don't need someone who understands where I came from. I need someone who knows where I'm going."

"The same place I am," he says without stopping to think, as if it's the easiest answer in the world, and when he kisses me this time there's no chance that he will stop. His lips are insistent on mine, his hands gentle as he pulls me to my feet and leads me back to the bed there's no longer any question that he will share. At one point he grows impatient enough with my suddenly clumsy feet to scoop me up and carry me the rest of the way, and this makes me laugh against his lips, hard enough for him to stop kissing me to ask if I need to have my head inspected.

"That's not a nice thing to say to someone who's mentally disoriented," I chide him gently. "I have the bracelet to prove it. Somewhere."

"Don't act like you're special," he teases me. "They let me have a bracelet too."

"I was just thinking," I tell him, "of all the times I would get frustrated with how you walked. I don't think I've ever been the one who's had heavy feet before."

His eyes are blazing when they look down at me, and I can feel the smooth muscles in his arms tense.

"That's because you're normally so graceful," he says as he pushes aside the door and deposits me neatly on the end of the bed, one hand coming down to grip mine as he sits down next to me, as the other brushes messy strands of hair from my face and I see a ghost of a smile whip across his face. "On your feet anyway."

"What if it's awful?" I say suddenly, and he laughs a little even though I see my own nervousness blossom in his eyes.

"Still no idea," he murmurs. "The effect you can have."

I frown at him in exasperation, and he leans forward.

"Katniss," he says. "I feel like my heart has stopped a thousand times. When I first heard you sing. When you would wear red to school. When you volunteered at the reaping. When Cinna set us on fire and you gripped my hand like you would never let it go. The first time you kissed me in the cave. When I had to propose to you in front of a crowd, and every word I spoke was like eating glass. Literally, even, when I ran into the force field."

I laugh, shakily, and he takes my other hand in his and presses them both palm down against his cheeks, locks his eyes on mine.

"When I saw the arena blow apart and I had no idea if you were dead or not," he says quietly. "When I was in the hospital and in the split instant before everything went white I saw your eyes and it was like my life had meaning again. When I saw you catch on fire. When I saw you go for the nightlock and it was the first arena all over again; only this time I wasn't going to stand aside and let you die.

"And after all of that," he says. "You worry that this is going to be something bad?"

I kiss him because I can't think of a response, operating on instinct because I'm afraid that reason will throw me a thousand new reasons why I don't deserve this from him.

"Have you ever," he says, pulling away from me, valiantly struggling for his words. "Have you ever thought that maybe you could – that we _would_-"

"Twice," I rescue him, amused to see Peeta, normally so swift with his words, finally at a loss. "Once in the cave. Once on the beach."

His fingers splay over my chest, over my heart, and I realize at once that he understands as well as I do that our long ago promise to protect each other means that each beat of his heart means that my own are numbered accordingly; that as long as he is alive I will sacrifice every beat of my heart to keep his going; that as long as he is here, there is nowhere else I can let myself be; that if his had ever stopped it wouldn't have taken very long for mine to catch up.

_Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without_ I hear Gale's voice, and I immediately shut him out.

Maybe I can't survive without Peeta, but I can't live without him either.

The second kiss came two weeks after the first, but the third came just a few nights later, and the fourth and fifth the next morning. After that it grew natural for me to accept his kiss before I disappeared into the woods, made it seem like something was missing if he didn't kiss me goodnight, even if his kisses were nothing but routine.

It took us months, but he got much more relaxed with his kisses, even dropping one on me in front of Haymitch, who shot me a smug look that resulted in him being shoved unceremoniously out into the snow.

A few days later Haymitch caught me while I was trying to slip unnoticed behind his house, the first stray light of the sunrise turning the world gray and pink, the dew on the grass glittering beneath the soles of my boots. He was sitting on a chair on his back porch with a cup of tea jittering in his shaky hands, a brown feather trapped in his hair. His bloodshot eyes were dark against a face that would not have looked out of place in the Capitol; he almost looked as if he had painted it white.

"You know, sweetheart," he said. "You're always leaving him. Have you noticed that?"

"I always come back," I said defensively, because I could think of nothing else to say, and Haymitch waved a hand at the chair next to his, slopping liquid over the rim of his cup.

After a brief internal struggle I crossed the grass and walked up to him warily, perching on the edge of the chair, laying my bow down next to me where I could grab it quickly if I had to do the world a favor and shoot him.

"What do you want, Haymitch?" I asked him. "Greasy Sae asked specifically for deer, and that's a hard one for me to do by myself."

He looked at me appraisingly and took a long drink, spilling most of the liquid onto an already drenched shirt.

"I see you're kissing him again," he said finally. "Or was that just for my benefit?"

The silence stretched in between us like a spider's web, delicate and gossamer-fine, and in it I sensed a potential breaking point for me and Haymitch.

"Not that it's any of your business," I told him. "But yes. I'm kissing him again. Do you have a problem with that?"

"That boy is in love with you," he said, and I jerked in surprise, bringing a vindictive smirk to Haymitch's lips. "And depending on how you're planning to handle it, you and I might have a problem."

Reading Haymitch's thoughts has always been one of my more unfortunate talents, and when he looked at me I knew he was thinking about the morning after I figured out why Snow was holding Peeta, the morning we were finally allowed out of the bunkers and they tried to make me shoot post-bombing-I'm-okay-we're-okay propos, the morning I cracked like fine china and howled for Haymitch, wanting only him because he loved Peeta too.

Loved Peeta _too_.

"You don't need to worry about it," I snapped.

"Don't I?" he asked mildly. "I saw all of the footage, you know." He sketched an imaginary flower over my cheek and I immediately heard Peeta's voice

_Thank you. That looks beautiful_.

"I saw how he handled himself around you when he was trying to convince you that you could live without him," he said. "And I saw how you fell apart when you had to try. And now I see how you're still tiptoeing around him and it makes me want to grab you and shake you senseless."

"Don't you dare," I hissed, and Haymitch held up a hand.

"I'm not going to touch you," he said dryly. "I know that things are never going to be normal with the two of you, but you still need to open your eyes, sweetheart, and see what's in front of you. When are you going to just admit what we all already know?"

"I know what's in front of me," I spat through lips that suddenly felt numb.

"Do you?" he asked, and I jumped from my seat and grabbed my bow, stalking off without looking backwards, listening to the low crackle of his laughter.

That was the beginning of me realizing all over again that maybe I didn't only need Peeta, that maybe I wanted him too.

"On the beach," he says now, just a hint of a smile in his voice. "When you and I – until Finnick-" He stops and takes a breath. "I've never wanted-I don't _think_-"

A tremor flicks across his shoulder as his brow furrows against the onslaught of false memory, his pupils dilating in the muted light that trickles in from the window until his eyes go black, and I wrap my arms around him and press my hands firmly against his back as he shuts his eyes tight, hold him even closer as his lips move against my ear and I can hear him chanting, "It's okay, she's okay, it's okay."

I don't know what to do – have always been horrible when it comes to helping Peeta – but before I can over-think it I start to sing; an effort to quiet him as once my father could quiet the birds; the only thing I knew to do to save me from myself; the only thing I can think of that will draw him back to me, because it was the reason he noticed me in the first place.

When I look up his eyes have calmed, and everything from that point on is as sweet and steady as Peeta himself.

When it's over, when he says my name into the dark, I reach for him and find I'm not the only one who's wept. It doesn't surprise me to feel the wetness on his cheeks; I was always the one who saw that as a weakness, when he was the one who realized that it was only a weakness to pretend to be someone that you're not.

_Always_ I think.

The room falls silent in the pale moonlight that tumbles in from the open window and puddles on the floor, on the thick blue quilt that we have thrown to the end of the bed, against his skin, which is as pale and pure as the white fluff of a dandelion seed, as the sheen of a pearl, and then he sucks in a breath, as if steeling himself for disappointment, and looks over at me.

"You love me," he whispers. "Real or not real."

I blink once, twice, and then force myself to meet his eyes, those blue eyes, _his_ blue eyes, and remember the feeling that burned up my spine like an electric current when I saw them appear out of the mud like magic; the way I had taken them down with me with his declaration burrowing along (_always_) saving itself for the moment when I needed it the most; the horrible flatness that had descended across them like a dull curtain after he had woven together a proposal lovely enough to bring an audience to tears (_not like this. he wanted it to be real);_ the laughter that twinkles in them when Haymitch, who has barely loved a soul in twenty-five years, waxes on for hours about his geese; the wistfulness that he tries in vain to hide when he is reading the letters from Annie that always include pictures of a tiny boy with dark hair and seafoam eyes.

The relief that laps like warm water from the lake when I tell him something is real and I see him look at me the way he did when we first got on the train to the Capitol and he knew only two things for certain: that he loved me, and that he was prepared to die if it meant that I might live.

A sudden warmth creeps over me when I realize that I might be the sunset, blazing bright and fast in the instant before dark, but it is Peeta who is the sky that supports it, constant, unchanging, always flawless and unending behind the clouds.

_My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am nineteen years old. My home is in District 12. My home is with Peeta. I used to have wings, but no one ever thought to teach me how to fly._

_I love Peeta. Real or not real?_

_...when are you going to just admit what we all already know?_

I reach over and lay a gentle palm over his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart against my fingers, as soothing as he is, as strong, and without any hesitation, without any trepidation, I look into those blue eyes I never had a chance against.

"Real," I tell him. "That's real."


End file.
